Jobs

Got knocked back for a NLP job that seemed quite well suited. Not to worry as usual the money was mediocre. Academia just seems too hard to get into right now. Not good timing for my PhD in terms of career progression. I'm just glad I wanted to do it for other (undefined) reasons.

I am now looking at Java positions. I will train myself on some of the major frameworks and maybe take a commercial qualification. I will then struggle up through the ranks to be where I was before the PhD, but in a much more commonly used language. Hopefully I will find a good place to work locally and settle in, if that fails I will learn what I can and go contracting again.

I still have searches out for business analyst and project manager jobs, but will need to be lucky to get one as I have no experience. I would also take a Progress 4GL contract if one appeared.

Job hunting

So far:
Interviews at Sheffield (Ischool) and Cardiff, done and failed.
Interview at PFT a start up in Sheffield, done, awaiting response.
Application to Lectureship in Ischool, not short listed.
Applications to various RA positions, not known yet.
Part time opportunity with Global company, mooted, but not confirmed.

I have a weeks work on a web site.

Finished

I am finished! The library copy is in and all the corrections made.

This blog will now chart my job hunt.

Dr Pasley (subject to minor corrections)

What an exhausting process the viva is!

Subject to one new experiment, and a calculation that did not meet with approval (oh and tonnes of typos), I am a doctor. Dr Pasley!

Now to change my salutation at all my banks, billing companies etc.

Rob.

Build up to viva

It seems important to take a step back before preparing for the viva. I need to think about the PhD in terms of being a piece of work, however during its creation there were pragmatic issues to be considered. So I have now about a month before I defend the thesis, and it has taken about a month from handing in to being able to face reading it again.

I am going to create a journal paper of about 20 pages from the 250+ pages of the thesis, this will require some distillation. That is not a problem however as some of the less central parts were published before the PhD anyway. These can be referenced reducing the writing needed. Still 266 >> 20 pages is quite a compression rate.

I am also hoping to write the long sidelined paper on ambiguity in gazetteers. The main co-author asked at a conference whether I had lost interest in it. This is not really the case, but with writing the thesis I certainly lost focus. Anyway it was looking interesting, so hopefully we can revive it and turn our interesting graphs into something more meaningful.

Handed in

That's it gone, done. Just waiting for a date for the viva now.

Final edits

Final edits today and print to pdf in order to get thesis bound. Exciting!

Rob.